Let’s not be shy about the afterlife

Why are we so wary about investigating the premonitions and spiritual
experiences that surround death?

When neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander recovered from his coma he described an experience which had apparently convinced him that an afterlife existed. It was of the lavishly conventional kind, with fluffy clouds, shimmering beings, and a beautiful blue-eyed guide Photo: GETTY

I’ve noticed that the first time small children get a whiff of the concept of death, they can’t stop talking about it. Suddenly they’re like junior barristers, and their questions are notably to the point. Does it hurt? Where do you go? Can you come back?

If you start, hesitantly, to reply – in what must seem a maddeningly vague way, given the whopping impact of your initial news – that after you die you carry on somewhere else (Dawkins, if you’re reading this, back off for a minute) the children are straight into the practicalities. What do you get to eat? Who’s there? Can the people here see you?

I can’t say I blame them, really. Revelations don’t come much bigger than the one saying that on some as yet unknown day each of us is going to depart this world, and no one will see us again in this life. I’ve had over 40 years to get used to it and it still shocks me. And yet, in contrast to the pleasingly direct, investigative approach taken by children towards the matter, most adults spend their time ignoring it and hushing it up.

Our modern Western culture is largely taken up with the prolongation of life and the avoidance of death. That’s a very reasonable notion to some extent, since most of us enjoy life and would like to have as much of it as possible. But a by-product is that the worried dance of denial about our own mortality makes the final stage of life much harder, bleaker and lonelier for dying people and their families.

We treat the deaths of others either as a piece of gross personal negligence or an outlandish case of bad luck. That is perhaps why I found the recent Newsweek essay by Dr Eben Alexander, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon who does not seem noticeably wacky, to be rather cheering. Dr Alexander contracted a very rare form of bacterial meningitis, which put him in a coma for seven days and effectively shut down his brain. When he recovered he described an experience which had apparently convinced him that an afterlife existed. It was of the lavishly conventional kind, with fluffy clouds, shimmering beings, and a beautiful blue-eyed guide – which has come as a gift to those who are predisposed to mock Dr Alexander as some kind of nut. Presumably they would have respected his account more if his vision had been less baroque.

In any case, we can probably all agree that a professionally well-respected man, who was not normally delusional, somehow had – while at death’s door – an overwhelmingly positive experience which profoundly altered his view of the afterlife. Why that occurred, or what it might signify for anyone else, is of course open to heavy debate.

Yet if one listens to the lectures and discussions of Dr Peter Fenwick, it becomes apparent that Dr Alexander’s is not an isolated experience. Dr Fenwick is a leading neuropsychiatrist who is an authority on near-death experiences, and has written a book called The Art of Dying which advocates the importance of “a good death”. Studies led him to conclude that near-death experiences occurred in a percentage of patients who had undergone cardiac arrest and had no pulse rate, heart rate or brainstem reflexes prior to their resuscitation. He described the discovery “that people have mental states which are present in the absence of brain function” as of “astonishing” importance to science. It has, he says, opened up a discussion on the nature of consciousness and even “the potential for a continuation of life after death”.

I listened late at night to one of Dr Fenwick’s online interviews. He seemed eminently serious: scholarly, articulate and not prone to stating exaggerated conclusions. Dr Fenwick had expended much professional time and thought collecting data from the dying, and examining their experiences and those of their loved ones. He spoke with confidence about certain phenomena which quite commonly occurred around death, such as “premonitions” by an individual or someone close to them that their death is approaching, or a dying person reporting the vision of a dead relative or spouse coming to collect them. (Interestingly, the “guide” figure varies according to one’s culture.)

I have no idea why such phenomena might happen, or indeed whether they might have a physical or psychological explanation. The fact is, however, that many people are aware of them, but are almost embarrassed to discuss them in case they are dismissed as crazy: they speak of them privately, to friends. We are taught that such things belong to the slippery, shameful realm of unreason. Yet while superstition is a deep, dark bog, science has sometimes assumed a rather blinkered resistance to lines of inquiry that might conceivably collide with spirituality: Dr Fenwick is in a minority. We are still in the dark about death, and it’s the biggest thing that happens to us. Why, unlike our children, are we not brave enough to ask it many more questions?

CAUTION: SLIPPERY SLOPE AHEAD

The yellow “Baby On Board” sticker has apparently become something of a safety hazard itself: according to a poll last week, the windscreen signs can create a blind spot which helps to cause accidents.

I have never quite understood the sticker’s logic: it is ostensibly there in order to persuade other drivers to take extra care, but surely motorists should start with the fundamental assumption that all cars contain precious human cargo, and proceed accordingly? Forty-six per cent of parents also kept the sign up when driving without their baby, which alters the general meaning to “baby might not actually be on board today, but please keep acting as if he or she is, as I would quite like not to get crushed myself”.

I see now that the “Baby On Board” sign has become a badge, distributed by London Transport, which pregnant women can wear to lay claim to a seat. This introduces a delicate hierarchy of considerations. At what stage in pregnancy does one acquire the badge and sitting rights? Should overlooked elderly people get “I’m 10 years older than I look” or “arthritis playing up” badges? I predict a future of crowded lapels. But the same group of stubbornly seated passengers who presently affect not to see the more deserving, may soon also pretend not to read.

TROLLS TRAMPLE ON THE WOW FACTOR

The modern British obsession with doing up property is well documented, including the pursuit of an elusive ingredient known on television shows as “the wow factor”. The word “wow” is what householders imagine their envious friends and neighbours saying as they goggle at the sunken living room and feature lighting.

Although I have owned a flat for many years, “the wow factor” still eludes me, unless it is a quietly appalled “wow” at finding yet another drawer stuffed with papers and defunct foreign coins. But the recession hasn’t dimmed our appetite for property programmes. Location, Location, Location – in which the tireless Kirstie Allsopp helps people find their dream home – and Grand Designs – in which they actually build it – are both going strong.

I suspect, however, that we watch them through grouchier eyes. As drama, such shows boast marital disputes, stressful building projects, financial setbacks and angry neighbours. Yet for audiences, half the fun is having a pop at the finished article from the safety of one’s unkempt living room.

When the designer Stella McCartney recently put her £2.5 million Notting Hill townhouse on the market, a minimalist vision of gleaming floorboards and white walls, a group of online “property trolls” gathered. One called it “blah and bland” and another carped: “She couldn’t even throw a staged red couch in there or something to give it some life?” It’s the revenge of the stay-puts in hard times: they’re not shifting, except to puncture someone else’s “wow”.